This section is intended to introduce the reader to various aspects of art, which are related to various aspects of the present invention that are described and/or claimed below. This discussion is believed to be helpful in providing the reader with background information to facilitate a better understanding of the various aspects of the present invention. Accordingly, it should be understood that these statements are to be read in this light, and not as admissions of prior art.
Graphical visualizations, such as bar charts or line charts are commonly used to display data streams. Financial data such as stock market information and status information about a computer network are two examples of data that a user may desire to view graphically. For large amounts of data, first layer visualizations are typically not detailed enough to effectively display the data stream. For this reason, second layer, third layer, or even lower layer (i.e. more detailed) visualizations can also be created to provide increased resolution of the data within the data stream. For complex or large data streams, the creation of meaningful visualizations is often difficult and burdensome.
The visualizations mentioned above are created many ways. First, the lower layer visualizations can be created by pre-programming a software program to display a pre-defined sequence of visualizations. For example, in a financial context, the user programs the software to display a first layer visualization of stock market performance and then to display lower layer visualizations of certain pre-selected stocks. While this technique permits display of detailed information from the data stream, it disadvantageously limits the display to only the pre-selected data (i.e., the specific stocks pre-selected by the user). A second type of sequence of visualizations permits a user to manually drill down to a lower layer visualizations by selecting a portion of the first layer (or lower layer) visualization to expand. While this technique permits the creation of lower layer visualizations that display the specific information desired by a user, this technique often involves manual interaction with the first layer visualization and thus is not often suitable for automated reporting.